David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  “Good,” said Nkomo. “Keep hating.”

  “Yeah? Hah, since when does a priest say that?”

  “If that’s what makes you smile, Mr. Smith, then hate all you want, it’s good to see your teeth.”

  Suddenly embarrassed, Garth lost his smile and found his boots.

  “And besides Bruckner?” Regretting he spoke, Nkomo pulled out a small notebook and pen, then stated to write. “Anyone else?”

  “Oh, some local stuff’s okay, Mathers and White Stripes, old Nugent and Iggy, but lately I’m more into blues. Robert Johnson, anyone named King— Some rock, mainly sixties and nineties, but the seventies was a dump and the eighties? I don’t know, too happy, too up.”

  “Can’t have that.”

  “Whatever, it’s all just taste,” Garth summed, now tying his left boot. “So we’re done? Got enough for your report?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’ve had counselors since pre-school, Father, every session gets a report.”

  “It wasn’t a session, we call it a ‘walk.’ And this—” Nkomo tore out a small notebook page, then offered it to Garth. “Is homework.”

  Brow furrowed, Garth eyed the page.

  “It’s not popular, and if the cliché is true, if music really speaks to all, then perhaps it will say something you’ve never heard. Give it a try?”

  Garth took the page, but before he could read it, a heavy vehicle rattled into a parking lot. And though the rattle turned his head, the squeals made him stare.

  “Good, now, I know it’s late, but in our last few minutes, how about you tell me about your future, huh? Do you have any plans, a goal?”

  Oblivious to Nkomo, Garth fixated on the vehicle, a yellow school bus opening its door.

  “College, a career—” Eyeing the sunset and unaware of the bus, the priest never saw the flesh tones and plaid now spilling forth, two dozen girls in field hockey skirts.

  “Come now, Mr. Smith, don’t you have any dreams?”

  Jaw ajar and staring benumbed, Garth glimpsed a flash of gold licked with orange, a toss of hair spun from the sun.

  “Just one?” asked Nkomo.

  An evanescent enchantment, it was her.

  “No embarrassment, Mr. Smith, just speak your mind. We all dream of something.”

  Ashley.

  “Mr. Smith?”

  Ashley Allezahr, her rapturous name, five sensuous syllables conjuring castles and caravans and Arabian moons, the anglicized offspring of some Prussian-Iranian, maybe-Slovakian tryst.

  “Mr. Smith!” blared Father Nkomo.

  Startled by it, Garth blinked at the priest and wondered why he yelled.

  “Girls can wait,” sighed Nkomo. “But your bus will not. Your boot?”

  His right boot still untied, Garth crouched to lace it up.

  “Now, life can bear fruit,” Nkomo resumed, unaware of Garth’s Ashley-angled peek, “but to grow it, we first need to work. So starting now—”

  But whatever the wisdom that flew from his mouth, Garth missed every pearl and gem, because now without cause, Ashley Allezahr waved, smiled Garth’s way, an epochal event surpassed only by her shout.

  “See you soon!” she called.

  “And therefore,” Nkomo summed, “you need to focus, discipline your mind. Understand?”

  A slab of clay spun by her call, Garth watched an errant football bounce at her feet, a near-miss making her laugh. Momentarily airy, a twilight sprite without care, Ashley Allezahr then frolicked across the lot, the darkening asphalt of an ephemeral eve.

  “And this is why I worry,” Nkomo resumed, now finishing the knot on Garth’s boot. “Sometimes, Mr. Smith, it’s like you’re not even here.”

  Everything spinning, yet unable to move — she waved? — Garth replayed the improbable sound of See you soon!

  “You replace history with fantasy, avoid all challenge or test—” Nkomo stood, looked down on Garth. “Is this really your goal, do you want to fail?”

  The last word stung, pierced the Allezahr fog.

  “Want it or not, you’re on the right track,” said Nkomo, and after hefting Garth’s pack, he stepped toward a bus stop, the gathering line.

  “Whatever,” Garth mumbled, now following behind. “So, after this morning — I mean, what’s the verdict, am I expelled? Will I be released?”

  “This isn’t a prison, we don’t ‘release.’ But if you’re willing to work, we’re ready to help, and that includes your peers; you should regard your fellow students like family.”

  “Yeah, well—” Taking his place at the end of the line, Garth waited behind an under-employed mix of a waiter, a welder, and a landscaper in a Detroit Pistons hat. “Just so you know, Father, I got no family, least of all here.”

  His remark overheard, the landscaper glanced back.

  “Not true,” corrected Nkomo, “you have many friends.”

  “What friends, them?” Honestly incredulous, Garth gestured to the fields. “Doesn’t a friend at least say hi, don’t they usually know your name?”

  “Well, yes, but—?”

  Engine growl interrupted, turned them toward an approaching city bus.

  “But the truth, Father,” Garth began, “is I’m in a school for kids with brains or bucks, so really, why am I here? How’d I even get in? Because in case you haven’t noticed, they’re Catholic and you’re a priest, but me? I don’t even believe in God!”

  “Ditto, kid,” added the waiter.

  “The Lions win another game, I’ll believe,” quipped the welder.

  Pulling alongside with a clatter, the bus opened its door.

  “Mr. Smith—” Nkomo leaned closer toward Garth. “What we say on these walks stays between us. I have your word?”

  “I got no secrets.”

  “I do,” Nkomo replied, his words masked by the idling bus. But as Garth looked back, the priest turned away.

  “When I was young, younger than you—” Hesitating, Nkomo gathered his breath. “They came with machetes, some had guns — and after killing my family, they made me a slave.”

  Straining to hear, Garth wondered if he’d misunderstood.

  “Years later I escaped, found help. And after becoming a priest, all I wanted was to go back, just return to my country and help those who needed so much. But when He answered my prayer, He sent me here,” Nkomo observed, now eyeing the fields and school. “Yet He also sent you, and though I know you don’t believe — this wasn’t an accident, God makes no mistakes.”

  Compelled to object, Garth instead stayed quiet, just held his tongue and pondered how one so wise could be so wrong.

  “So,” Nkomo resumed, “we’ll see you for tomorrow’s test? Garth?”

  Shocked by it, the absence of a ‘Mr.’ or ‘Smith,’ Garth hoped this odd walk was over, that all the strangeness had left.

  “Oh,” interjected Nkomo, now dipping into his cassock pocket, “I believe you dropped this just after class; it’s something you drew?”

  Snapping open a paper, the priest revealed a rough pencil sketch of a faceless being in chains.

  “Uh—?” Garth followed the line toward the bus. “Yeah, it’s mine, it’s nothing.”

  “Nothing but proof,” Nkomo sighed. “You found your file, had a look?”

  Garth mulled what he meant. “File?”

  “Well, obviously, how else—?” Trying to find deception in Garth’s face, Nkomo instead just found confusion, the furrowed truth. “You — just drew this, made it up?”

  “Not exactly, it’s something I dreamed.”

  “Dreamed, what—?” Now Nkomo was confused. “So, it was inspired by your comics, it’s some kind of ghost?”

  “More like a Wraith,” Garth answered, wishing the riders would hurry and board.

  “I’m sorry,” Nkomo persisted, “but I don’t quite know the word. It means—?”

  “A Wraith hints about the future, an event.”

  “Like?”

  “Like our death,” Garth repli
ed, and for a moment, neither moved.

  “Hey, Padre!” Fresh tickets stuffing his pocket, the same driver glared. “You ridin’ or what!”

  Garth said nothing, just took the sketch and boarded the bus.

  “Call anytime, do you hear?” shouted Nkomo. “If you ever need help—?”

  His offer cut short by the closing door, Nkomo watched the bus rattle toward night. But he also checked the passing windows, and though he glimpsed other faces, he never saw Garth, never noticed him collapse in a seat from a fresh spasm in his back, that clawing pain now electrifying his flesh as it slowly, inexplicably, inched higher up.

  Chapter 4

  An Evening in the Savoy

  Tall and dark and showing some curve, a house with the figure of a Victorian and the face of neglect stood one story and a turret above the rest, above blocks of bungalows both occupied and not, homes raised by Polish immigrants and razed by welfare and politics and crime. And though Poletown was gone, the streets of Hamtramck off East Detroit still trafficked in much the same noise, in shouts of the young and sighs of the old and the beautiful racket of work.

  A racket, this night, that came from the tall, dark house. A persistent melody of hammer and saw, it rattled a basement window, a rectangular pane both gritty with bug and sniffed, at the moment, by a mouse. Which wondered, as much as mice can, what caused the clamor within.

  But the mouse grew anxious, it needed to nest, so leaving the window, it crossed the lawn. Dodging monsters, imagined owls and cats, it ended its crossing by climbing bricks, the weathered pedestal of an off-kilter sign. Yet after uncounted calamities, after blizzards and hail and tax liens forestalled, the sign endured, “Daisy Jack’s Group Home” still held firm. True, Daisy had died, but since her son owned the Home and every last mouse, Daisy’s guiding philosophy not only remained, it animated each unoiled hinge and half-lit bulb: “Children First, But Save the Dime.”

  “Ah!” cried someone in pain. Frightened by it, the mouse sniffed toward the source, toward the turret room window wide-open above.

  Shirt off and gripping the sill, Garth twisted around to watch a fourth-grader examine his back. A boy who now poked it, forcefully, with a pencil’s sharp tip.

  “Not the pointy end, the dull!” scolded Garth. “Use the eraser!”

  “Oh,” answered the boy, his focus unperturbed. Interested in everything, a nine-year-old who graphed his own academic waypoints and playground goals, Ryan Jones adjusted his thick glasses, then flipped his surgical tool to its eraser end. Probing gently, he investigated something above Garth’s right shoulder blade, a tiny pink lump.

  “Best guess,” Ryan ruminated, “I’d call it a zit.”

  “It’s not a zit!”

  “No, well, then maybe it’s a bite,” said Ryan, no other diagnosis left. “Some bedbug or spider or — hey, are you hosting lice?”

  Replying with a groan, Garth shut the window and yanked on a shirt. “It’s not lice, alright? The pain was inside, under my skin, I nearly passed out!”

  Ryan grunted. Giving the eraser a thoughtful gnaw, he tapped the keys of an old desktop computer, a relic sticky from soda and pink-spotted with gum. “Any hits on ‘back pain’?”

  “Twenty-four million,” Garth answered, “I ran out of time.”

  “Hmm.” Trying to pace, maneuver around the cramped, conical room, Ryan stepped over shoeboxes, eight dusty rows. “Did you ask Miss Kang? She still watches ‘House.’”

  “Whatever,” mumbled Garth. Then pulling out his iPod, he connected to the old computer’s gravy-stained jack.

  “Now what,” asked Ryan. “You rippin’ more blues?”

  “No.”

  “Bruckner or Brahms, somebody dead?”

  “No.”

  “Polkas, Zydeco, Afghan rap—”

  Ignoring the tease, Garth stepped over the shoeboxes to a mirror’s cracked glass, then tried to eye the spot on his back. “You know, it did sort of spasm; you think I just pulled a muscle?”

  “You?”

  “Funny, Ryan. Only it’s not.” Seeing little in the mirror, Garth eased into a chair missing most of its seat. “But the weird thing? I first felt it in history class, my back hurt before I ran.”

  “Yeah? Then maybe it was — I don’t know, some sitting disorder. You got a school nurse? And in your school, would ‘she’ have to be a ‘he’?”

  “Who knows,” Garth replied, now digging into his pack. “But if it happens again tomorrow, I’ll definitely get it checked. In fact, if I play this right, I might just dodge a test,” he mused. “The download’s done, I got it?”

  Ryan checked the monitor screen. “Done, it’s done, it’s—?” Pausing, he leaned closer in. “Latin?”

  “Never mind, it’s homework. And what about my tape, you ever put it back?”

  “Sure did,” Ryan answered, yanking open a drawer and grabbing a roll of electrical tape. “But what’s up with the tape, why do you need—?” His question answered, Ryan watched Garth inspect the severed earphone cord. “Whoa, again? The same priest?”

  “Same priest, different ear,” said Garth, now opening a pocket knife. “So the day was a total disaster, but then—” He stripped back some cord insulation. “Then something happened, a thing you just won’t believe. You know who I saw? Who actually saw me?”

  Noting an odd distortion, a smirkish curve to Garth’s mouth, Ryan guessed mischief, some prior near miss. “That guy with the chickens, the one with the gun?”

  Garth stayed quiet. Enjoying the moment and making it last, he spliced the iPod earphone back to its wire. “Ashley,” he said, unable to hide his rapturous smile.

  “Ashley—?”

  Garth’s smirk grew to a grin.

  “Her?” the fourth-grader gasped.

  “She smiled, she waved—”

  “That Ashley, Porsche Ashley?” pressed Ryan.

  “That’s the one, and then she said, ‘see you soon.’”

  “Valentine Porsche Ashley, are you sure?”

  “Ashley Allezahr, Ryan, it was her! Hah, you believe it?”

  Ryan thought a moment, then a few more. “Uh—?”

  “Neither did I, I still don’t,” Garth confessed, now taking the tape. “But it happened, I was there, and as bad as today was—” Holding up the earphone, he inspected his splice. “In one second, everything flipped, just completely and totally turned. I mean, is that even possible?”

  Ready to discourse on the possible and not, Ryan paused at the sound of a horn, two short blasts.

  “It’s a van!” Ryan shouted, now shoving the window back up. “I’ll bet it’s Mr. Jack!”

  “I’ll be it’s not,” deadpanned Garth. “He’ll cancel.”

  “Mr. Jack!” shouted Ryan. “Up here, it’s Ryan, are you coming, too?”

  “No Mr. Jack!” answered a woman below. “Big meeting tonight, he need more cash.”

  Born in Beijing when it was still Peking, Miss Kang stepped down from an empty, twelve-seat van. The primary driver for vehicles and the vacuum, the deep-fryer, too, her title of Designated Mother also made her Enforcer of Rules. “Homework and chores, everything done?”

  “Done, Miss Kang,” Ryan shot back, “we’re ready to go!”

  “Then help in the basement and wake up Garth, too, we’re late!”

  “Coming, Miss Kang, and Garth’s still awake!” Departing the window and leaving it up, Ryan bolted past the bed. “You heard her, bro’, let’s go!”

  “You go ahead,” Garth yawned, now taping his earphone splice.

  “Huh?”

  “My legs hurt, I’m not risking my back, and no way I’m doing this again, I’m staying in.”

  “What, are you kidding? We always go, it’s tradition, and when we’re done, we’re going to Igloo’s!”

  “We always go to Igloo’s, but by the time we get there, they’re also always closed. And Mr. Jack knows that, Ryan, we’re just cheap child labor and we’re all being used.”

  “But the van
, the city, who knows where we’ll go! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “I’m in high school, Ryan, I’ve crossed the fun divide. But I’m sure everyone else is going, so just hang with the girls or, I don’t know, try Marco or Zack.”

  Ryan had no answer, just stood there and stared, then slowly left. And though the iffy staircase creaked, announced his descent one crestfallen step at a time, Garth just taped, refused to be pressured or used. He did feel sorry for the boy, but as he recalled his run, those signs on the lawns and tools past his head, he mouthed again his pledge, his ironclad vow of no more.

  Two-and-a-half stories below, frantic sawing cut white pine poles while a hammer banged and bent nails. The noise of assembly rebounding, reflecting off bare basement walls, the other Group Home residents worked the line.

  “We got any more ‘Go Union, Go Jack, Go Union Jack’?” shouted Niqua.

  “We got a whole stack!” Marco snapped. “What we need are more ‘Jack Be Quick!’”

  Both sixteen, both sawing poles into yard-sign stakes, Niqua and Marco fed their production to Lana, a year younger and next in line. She swung the hammer, and after nailing pre-printed signs to the stakes, she passed them, via her black-and-blue thumb, to Kricket, the newest arrival at the Home. But the rookie worked fast, and without delay, the seventh-grader hauled her finished product to shipping, four rusty wagons loaded by Ryan.

  “Push it, people!” ordered a voice off the line. “Overtime — is not an option!”

  First among residents, Zack reclined on an Edsel-era couch wedged before a projection TV, a bankruptcy bargain from an old Blockbuster store. And though age usually set Group Home rank, seventeen-year-old Zack ruled more by mass, the physical fact he outweighed any two boys in the house. And tonight, just to set the tone, he wore his power shirt, a sweat-stained tee with an iron-on Che Guevara that bulged, with bourgeoisie excess, over his gut.

  “Home stretch!” Zack announced, swirling his cola and ice. “Almost there, we’re almost—?”

  A crash interrupted, turned every head to Ryan’s wagon, its spilled load of signs.

  “Hey!” yelped Zack, rolling off the couch. “Did you flip my rig?”

  “Sorry,” said Ryan, starting to pick up. “Guess I overloaded, they just fell.”